Pérez Art Museum Miami presents survey of work by Toba Khedoori in the artist's largest presentation

MIAMI, FLA.- Prez Art Museum Miami presents Toba Khedoori, a major museum survey of Khedoori’s oeuvre over the past 22 years and the largest presentation of the artist’s work to date. On view starting April 21, 2017, the exhibition includes close to 30 works and presents the artist’s more recent oil-on-canvas paintings alongside her earlier large-scale works on paper, demonstrating the impressive arc of her artistic production over the past two decades.

Toba Khedoori is known for drawings rendered in intimate detail, often depicting architectural elements or objects detached from their surroundings—and often at a very large scale. In contrast to the exhibition’s first presentation at LACMA, Toba Khedoori at PAMM traces the most recent works to the earliest works in her oeuvre. Such reverse chronology highlights the long development of her work, from an intimate scale to a much larger scale than she began with.

“Toba’s work continually reminds us of the power in the hands of an artist to create with simple means – graphite or paint and a surface to be inscribed upon,” said PAMM Director and exhibition curator Franklin Sirmans. “The exhibition hopefully slows down time, pace and the museum going experience, and encourages a passion for thoughtful and sustained looking.”

Khedoori’s precise draftsmanship and large-scale works on paper, for which she has become known, renders objects and spaces familiar yet decontextualized. In recent years, she has transitioned from paper to canvas, producing smaller scale works that hover between representation and abstraction. Like her earlier compositions, these works are enigmatic and acutely detailed. In an art world awash with rapidly moving images and saturated colors, Khedoori remains committed to the silent, slow and exacting process of working by hand.

“Toba is an artist of the world and her work is not defined by geography,” explains Sirmans. “At PAMM, Toba’s work will be situated amidst an achievement in architecture, which has often been the subject of her work.”

Two new paintings, which have never before been shown at a museum, will be on view as part of PAMM’s presentation of the exhibition. The paintings, Untitled (hand I) and Untitled (hand II), 2014, represent the artist’s introduction of the figure into her work, a characteristic that has been absent in her output until this point. Other highlights include Untitled (doors) (1996) and Untitled (hallway) (1997), whose wax-treated surfaces contain detritus from the artist’s studio floor; Untitled (black fireplace) (2006) and Untitled (white fireplace) (2005), which feature an almost photorealist depiction of wood burning in a fireplace; and Untitled (tile) (2015), a geometric study of a mosaic tile floor reflecting light from an unseen source.

Toba Khedoori was born in Sydney, Australia in 1964. She received her BA from the San Francisco Art Institute (1988) and her MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles (1994).

Her work has been the subject of solo museum exhibitions worldwide, including the Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis (2003); Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin (2002); Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (2001); Museum fr Gegenwartskunst, Basel (2001); Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. (1997); and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1997).

Khedoori was the recipient of a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (1994) and a MacArthur Foundation Grant (2002). Curators have included her in numerous international group exhibitions such as the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009); 2nd Seville Biennal (2006); Liverpool Biennial (2006); 26th So Paulo Biennial (2004); and the Whitney Biennial (1995).

Prominent museums that hold her work in their permanent collections include the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Schaulager, Basel; Albertina, Vienna; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Art Institute of Chicago; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Broad, Los Angeles; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. She lives and works in Los Angeles.

Read on Art Daily